ON STAGE THEATER & MUSIC. THEATER.

At Ravinia Festival, the play's the sing

For the last 98 summers, an evening at Ravinia Park has been considered one of the Chicago area's most appealing warm-weather diversions--for music lovers, not a place to watch theater.

Heck, you can't even really see the stage from the lawn.

But if you look over the schedule, you cannot help but notice that the Highland Park venue has greatly increased the number, scale and range of its theatrically framed events.

On Saturday night, "The Romeo and Juliet Project" will combine text from the classic Shakespearean tragedy with music from some of the numerous composers who have been inspired by the Bard's ill-fated young lovers. On Sunday, the redoubtable veteran Broadway star John Raitt will make his Ravinia Festival debut singing the incomparable "Soliloquy" from "Carousel" as part of Ravinia's Richard Rodgers Centennial Concert.

"The attendance at symphony concerts all over the country has been going down," says John de Lancie, the actor-director behind "The Romeo and Juliet Project." "These narrations seem to provide an entry-level concert experience for people who want an introduction to the orchestra."

Later in the summer, an evocatively named puppeteer called Basil Twist (the creator of the Off-Broadway show "Symphonie Fantastique") will accompany the Eos Orchestra as part of a program called "Puppets and Spain."

And from Aug. 22-24, Ravinia continues its ongoing "Sondheim at 75" series, an ongoing collection of concert performances designed to honor the great American composer of Broadway musicals. Under the direction of the much-admired Lonny Price, this year's production will be "A Little Night Music" starring Patti LuPone and George Hearn and featuring the busy Chicago performer Hollis Resnik.

Even the indefatigable Michael Halberstam, the artistic director of the Glencoe-based Writers' Theatre Chicago is getting in on the Ravinia act. Halberstam will serve as the stage director for Ravinia's "semi-staged" Chicago premiere of the Sergei Rachmanioff opera "Francesca de Rimini" on Aug. 10.

Longtime fans of the festival will recall that it actually has a long and storied history of opera and theater production (especially at the indoor Martin Theatre), and included the word "dramatic" in its mission statement in the 1940s. Dance has also been a part of the summer season for years. Still, it's fair to say that the recent uptick in theatrical programming at Ravinia is a response to what the festival's leaders perceive as changes in audience tastes.

Welz Kauffman, Ravinia's president and chief executive officer, also sees theater as a way to build audiences. "Audiences for classical music are just not growing in the way we would like to see," he says. "A lot of people are put off by the idea of going to an orchestral concert. We've never been about dumbing down the art, but we need to change the way we present music to our audiences. People are more willing to come when there are some spoken words."

Beginning last season, Ravinia started making a bigger commitment to theater--especially musical theater--and it has tried to utilize both local performers and international stars. "There's such a vibrant and creative theater scene in Chicago," Kauffman says. "Tapping into that world is a way of bringing people to our sandbox who have not been here before."

Last year, de Lancie put together a music-drama piece combining "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and the work of Mendelssohn. But since some 30 composers have written music linked in some way to this particular piece of Shakespeare, this year de Lancie chose to pair the words of "Romeo and Juliet" with a wide variety of musical works--including fare by Berlioz, Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky.

De Lancie, an outspoken promoter of music-theater hybrid shows, says he's encountered some resistance in various places from administrators and critics who think that classical music should be presented in a strictly concert format. But, he argues, audiences don't worry so much about mixing genres.

"The objections are in the minds of the people who run American orchestras," DeLancie says, "the audience is way ahead."

Still, you won't be seeing the full play, of course. De Lancie says he will emphasize the death of Tybalt and the procuring of Juliet's poison. There will be two actors, two singers and two dancers. "We're telling the story of Romeo and Juliet and then using music to provide the emotional weight," de Lancie says. "Otherwise we'd need a cast of thousands."

But what about that thorny issue of a lawn without a view of the stage?

Kauffman admits that the layout of the park means it's unlikely Ravinia would currently present, say, a full-blown Broadway show in its main pavilion. But he says discussions are taking place about how to incorporate the lawn picnickers in the theatrical activity inside the pavilion.

He's interested in getting actors out on the lawn (so watch out this weekend). And, although he knows it's a controversial idea, Kauffman also is musing about putting up a big screen for certain music-theater or dance events.

"I wouldn't want anything garish or gaudy," he says. "But a lot of other venues like ours are doing it. We want to suck people in."

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For more information on the individual musical theater performances at the Ravinia Festival, call 847-266-5100.